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Cherie Blair claims 'most African women's first sexual experience is rape'


Cherie Blair has been criticised for “usurping” the voice of African women and reinforcing stereotypes by telling school children during a talk that “most African ladies’ first sexual experience is rape”.

The barrister and women’s rights campaigner made the comment during a talk about women and leadership at the Cardinal Vaughan Memorial School in London, attended by about 100 people.

The leadership lecture, as the event was called, took place on 20 March. In an email, the school said: “We are delighted that this talk has been very popular.”

One audience member, Caitlin, who did want not to give her surname, said she was surprised by the comment: “No one seemed to react and I was shocked because I felt like she was in a position of authority and should take responsibility for saying things like that without any evidence to support it.”

Caitlin emailed the Cherie Blair Foundation, a charity that aims to empower women in developing and emerging economies through entrepreneurship, who replied to say they believed Blair’s comment referred “to the women she had met and heard directly from in the initial years of the Foundation’s work rather than a specific research piece”.

The email from the foundation said: “As I’m sure you know, forms of exploitation – including rape – are a huge barrier to gender equality and impact the ability of women to learn skills, grow businesses and can stymie their overall empowerment.”

The Labour MP for Newcastle upon Tyne Central, Chi Onwurah, who chairs of the all-party parliamentary group for Africa, said: “Ms Blair should enable African women to speak for themselves instead of usurping their voice and their experience.”

Onwurah said Blair, the wife of the former prime minister Tony, should pay the fares and visas for a diverse group of African women to come to the UK to talk for themselves to help “undo the insult and injury” her words had caused.

She added: “Violence against women is a huge problem in many African countries – as it is here – but to characterise African women’s sexual experience as rooted in rape undermines the hard work of many to tackle this issue while playing to and indeed stoking stereotypes of sexually aggressive African men and passive women.”

Judy Gitau Nkuranga, the regional coordinator for Africa at Equality Now, said: “Between the ages of 15 and 49, 43% of women have reported having experienced gender-based violence, including sexual violence or abuse. It’s not all or a majority but a large number … It’s not a unique phenomenon to Africa but it is widespread and that must be acknowledged.”

Blair said: “My comments were in answer to a question about adolescent African girls – not African women – missing out on their education for a variety of reasons including early pregnancy. In that context I said that for the vast majority of young girls – who are often 12-, 13-, 14-year-olds – their first experience of sex was rape.

“There are studies that back this up, including a WHO report in 2002 that concludes: ‘A growing number of studies, particularly from sub-Saharan Africa, indicate that the first sexual experience of girls is often unwanted and forced.’ In one case control study of 544 adolescent girls it noted that ‘when asked about the consequences of refusing sex, 77.9% of the study cases and 72.1% of the controls said they feared being beaten if they refused to have sex.’

“It was not my intent to offend or undermine anyone with my comments, and I would welcome more recent stats that showed these findings are outdated. But the sad truth is that too many young African girls continue to experience sexual assault, become pregnant and in consequence fall out of education. I believe it’s important to shed light on this, as the role of education is crucial to empower girls and the importance of investing in young people cannot be overstated.”